Other risk factors, such as age at menopause, dense breast tissue on a mammogram,
use of birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy, a high-fat diet, drinking
alcohol, low physical activity, obesity, or environmental exposures, are not included
in risk estimates with the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool for three reasons:
evidence is not conclusive or researchers cannot accurately determine how much these
factors contribute to the calculation of risk for an individual woman, or adding
these factors does not increase the accuracy of the tool appreciably.

Breast cancer may also be caused by inherited gene mutations. Hereditary breast
cancers account for approximately 5% to 10% of all breast cancers. Specific hereditary
predispositions for breast cancer, such as inheriting a mutation in either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, are not taken into account in risk estimates with
the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool. Although the tool performs well in clinics
where women have a strong family history of breast cancer, more specific methods
for projecting risk are appropriate if a woman is known to carry a breast cancer-producing
mutation in BRCA1 or BRCA2. See "About the Tool" for more information.

Researchers are, however, conducting additional studies to gather more data and
to determine whether including information on other risk factors can strengthen
the statistical model, called the Gail model,
upon which the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool is based. Nonetheless, the current
model estimates breast cancer risk accurately on average.